Oct. 3- Tianchi Lake

On Friday we got to sleep in until 9, which was great, and the went down to breakfast. Once again the "western" breakfast consisted of fried rice among other Chinese dishes but they did have toast with strawberry jelly which was really good. We left the hotel at 10:00 to go to the Tianchi Lake located in a mountain range in Urumqi. It took an hour and a half to drive up through the mountains and the drive up was gorgeous. I'm glad we came up during the fall because the trees were changing colors. It made me want to move elsewhere for law school even more. I love seasons and we don't really get those in Texas :) We also saw wild goats and cows walking around in the mountains which was cool. They're the first wild animals we saw on the trip except for some camels in the Go-bi. Our big bus couldn't take us the whole way up so we got on smaller buses that wound their way up the mountain and finished the climb at the lake. The air was crisp and cool and the lake was like a painting that you see but don't think it's real. I climbed up on a rock and found myself wishing that I lived there just so I could look at the mountains and lake very day. We wandered around some other paths and then Tyler, Joe, and I walked off the beaten path and hiked up the side of a mountain to a small level. After we got to the top of the small incline we began our way down and Joe slid on one part of it because the rocks were loose. He pointed it out to Tyler and I as we made our way down. When I got to it I thought I was going slow enough but I definitely slid down part of it and had to grab weeds to stop myself. I ended up with a bunch of blisters in my hand. Next, Tyler came down and he tried going down backwards but he slid in the same place we did but on his knees. You'd think we'd be able to avoid it after seeing other people make the same mistake but that just wasn't the case :)

As we continued our wandering, we looked up and saw a small gazebo way at the top of one of the mountains. We thought it would be cool to hike up there so we walked around the base of the mountain looking for a good way up. We found a stair case starting from the bottom but it had a "Do Not Enter" sign in front of it so, of course, we walked around the sign and started up the steps. We quickly found out that the steps were for Chinese feet because I could only fit the toe of my shoe on about 75% of the steps. Some of them had rocks all over them and others had the cement coming out from underneath. However, we would not be deterred and continued to climb. We were supposed to meet the rest of the group at 2 down at the bottom to go look at local dwellings but we refused to go back so we called Brian and kept climbing. The higher we got the thinner the air became and the steeper the steps grew. When we finally made it to the top of the steps the view of the lake was nothing less than stellar. You could see the snowcapped mountains in the far distance and the lake looked like a small pond from that height. It is one, if not the, most amazing thing I've ever seen. Not to mention the enormous sense of accomplishment that came with getting to that gazebo. After hanging out in the gazebo we walked down the stairs, completely sideways to avoid tumbling down, and we compared ourselves to "The Lord of the Rings" characters hiking around Middle Earth :)

Once we got to the bottom we sat down by the lake and had a Snickers bar as a congratulatory treat. Then we went up to the local dwellings of the nomadic people living in the mountains. We spent about half an hour there and then got back on our bus and returned to the city. We walked around Red Hill Park for about an hour. It was kind of like a small Disney World, mostly kids and more people taking our picture. I thought it was funny that they had that game like we have that is smash the gopher with the big hammer but they had smash the dog instead. Once we got back to the hotel Selina and I chilled for about an hour then headed out to the night market in Urumqi for dinner. We each got a vegetable wrap and followed that with a fried egg pancake with spicy sauce, overall a well balanced meal :) We walked around the market and we both got goat skin gloves that are really warm. After the market we went back to the hotel and went to sleep. I was completely wiped out from climbing around the Tianhci Lake.